Long car journeys with little people

As with many of my negative baby stories this one also follows a predictable pattern.

I had just had the best holiday ever. This was a completely stress free truly enjoyable, I love my life and am so lucky to have such a perfect family who I love spending time with, holiday. This is the first time this has happened since their arrival as although the other holidays had many enjoyable moments there were also many moments I would rather forget!

So there I am in the car sailing along traffic free, with a warm post amazing holiday warmth radiating all around me. Then suddenly from the back seat I hear a ‘Oh mummy I can’t get this sticker off of my activity book.’

It’s OK. He only wants help with his sticker, I can do that.

After 20 minutes of screaming every minute that he has dropped the sticker, the sticker has lost its stickiness, the sticker wasn’t the colour he wanted etc. My holiday glow was fading fast.

Thank goodness for my Wise Hippo knowledge I took a nice 5,4,3,2,1 relax breath. In fact, I took a lot of them.

Especially as the thoughts at the forefront of my mind were:

1. Which idiot decided it was a good idea to buy the child an activity book for the car? Sadly, the answer to that question is me. Oh yes that is right, I have bought this hell upon myself, I can’t even put the blame on anyone else.

2. Why does he never call for daddy? How is it that daddy never gets moaned at for there not being any gorilla grip glue and black paint in the car when he wants to turn the baking paper, that he has found in a bag in between the car seats, into a pirate flag?

Just at that moment, of course, satnav announces in her best ‘ha, thought it couldn’t get any worse did you?’ voice that the route had been changed due to delays on the planned route. At that precise moment we hit the traffic and begin crawling.

This is when my husband decided to start moaning about the fact that he doesn’t want to be stuck in traffic. Oh really? Because I just love to be stuck in traffic.

Then a rustling was heard from the back seats and my son started screaming that my daughter had woken up and found the box of ice cream cones in the bag on the back seat and was eating them and there won’t be any left for him. Ahhhhhhhh.

I am also kicking myself that I didn’t buy a car DVD player when Aldi had them on a special buy.

Wouldn’t I be worried about the amount of screen time my children would be watching? After all it was a four hour car journey?

Nope.

I would be really happy for him to sit in the back of the car watching that much TV.

When we were half an hour away from home (and that was on a wing and a prayer if we didn’t get delayed by further traffic which is quite probable when travelling through London on the A406) my son started screaming that he wanted to get out of the car as he had had enough.

Honestly to listen to him you would have thought he was being murdered and I know he was in genuine distress and really tired, which is mainly what all of his unwanted behaviour was all about but seriously? I can guarantee my need and desire to get out of the car was way greater than his.

Finally we arrived home. I crawled through the door, very grateful to be home, and dragged myself over to the kettle knowing that a nice cup of tea would put everything right. I said a little silent prayer for my amazing mum who thoughtfully brought over milk and bread.

I didn’t fully comprehend the whole ‘are we there yet?’ joke.

I do now!

Fully!

It’s not a joke and it is not funny!

I have no plans to put myself into that situation again any time soon (or ever).

I am also going to keep my eyes out for a car DVD player.

#carjourney #travellingwithchildren #holidays #holiday #trafficandchildren